One (fake) boyfriend
Practically perfect in every way
Luc O'Donnell is tangentially--and reluctantly--famous. His rock star parents split when he was young, and the father he's never met spent the next twenty years cruising in and out of rehab. Now that his dad's making a comeback, Luc's back in the public eye, and one compromising photo is enough to ruin everything.
To clean up his image, Luc has to find a nice, normal relationship...and Oliver Blackwood is as nice and normal as they come. He's a barrister, an ethical vegetarian, and he's never inspired a moment of scandal in his life. In other words: perfect boyfriend material. Unfortunately apart from being gay, single, and really, really in need of a date for a big event, Luc and Oliver have nothing in common. So they strike a deal to be publicity-friendly (fake) boyfriends until the dust has settled. Then they can go their separate ways and pretend it never happened.
But the thing about fake-dating is that it can feel a lot like real-dating. And that's when you get used to someone. Start falling for them. Don't ever want to let them go.
What I thought about Boyfriend Material
The story is simple here -- Luc, a gregarious party boy needs to clean up his image with a stable boyfriend. Barrister Oliver needs a boyfriend for a party. So they start fake-dating, and if you read romance, you know how that ends up.
Alexis Hall gives good banter in this M/M romance and I found myself along for the ride with these two and invested enough to want to know how they would deal with their developing feelings. The focus is more on this aspect of their relationship rather than the physical and I liked that about it.
This was a fun read. Writing romcom isn't easy and I found myself smiling as I was reading. I liked Luc and his self-depracating humor. I also liked the gang of friends. Overall, no big surprises, but if you are looking for a standalone M/M romcom, you might want to check this one out.
An ARC was provided. This is my honest review.
About the Author
Alexis Hall was born in the early 1980s and still thinks the 21st century is the future. To this day, he feels cheated that he lived through a fin de siècle but inexplicably failed to drink a single glass of absinthe, dance with a single courtesan, or stay in a single garret.
He did the Oxbridge thing sometime in the 2000s and failed to learn anything of substance. He has had many jobs, including ice cream maker, fortune teller, lab technician, and professional gambler. He was fired from most of them.
He can neither cook nor sing, but he can handle a 17th century smallsword, punts from the proper end, and knows how to hotwire a car.
He lives in southeast England, with no cats and no children, and fully intends to keep it that way.
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